high fructose
by CherryFlavoredChalk
Summary: start a riot or go home. SoraKairi, KairiSora.


_high fructose_

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Girl.

Girl at a dance party, to be specific. Girl with red hair that same color that Axel had been eyeing last week when you'd gone to CVS, the same color that you only see at Thanksgiving and Christmas and potlucks; the same rubbery logs of cranberry sauce on still plates.

Her hair is too bright even with the dim lighting and you can still see patchy shades of blonde underneath it all, mixed in cleverly with all the beads and those raccoon stripes that Olette had tried to put in her hair the last time you came over. The beads in her hair clash with her clothes; neon and molded with sweat against her body.

You think she looks a little silly. Riku thinks she's hot.

She's only the thirty-thousandth scene kid you've seen at this concert, with her raccoon stripes and her tight neon jeans and pinched back band tee, pulled up to show off the flat lines of her stomach and the cheap navel piercing. There's a chance that she doesn't even know the band that's playing, not as well as you do--but you grew up with them, and she didn't.

Riku says he's going to ask her to dance, and gets waylaid by a sultry blonde with blue gauges the size of quarters and combat boots. He flicks his eyes over at you and smiles lopsidedly, shrugging as he thrash-dances his way over to the bar with his new playmate.

The girl is laughing now, her hips nudging with her friends as she hops up and down four beats too late. She has no sense of rhythm and she keeps pulling up her shirt, inspecting the ring as the crowd pushes her and her scene-pack ahead in a gibbering frenzy.

She looks kind of cute and like this is her first concert ever. Her parents probably don't know where she is.

You say, "I kind of hate this."

"What?" Riku's back with his little blonde bombshell, a diet coke in his hand because he's the DD for the evening. The blonde pokes out his bottom lip and pouts at you for a few seconds in a way you guess is supposed to be seductive. It just makes him look like he's constipated.

You're not really into this anymore, and you start looking around for people. You can see Axel over by the door, flirting outrageously with the spiky-haired usher as she clips ticket after ticket, her lips pleated into a thin line. You see Olette twisting-and-shouting her way over to some boy that you vaguely remembered seeing from fourth period Biology, her arm wrapped securely around the waist of someone who is either Marluxia or Hayner--the lighting is too dim to be perfectly sure.

"Can we leave?" The kids are making you feel nauseous, all of them clambering for Xion's shoelaces and safety pins as she leans into a crouch, the top of her head brushing against theirs. Their little neon-colored fingertips groping at her hair, touching her knees and her forearms, screeching as she lowers her face to the crowd and blows a kiss.

The scene girl, the fake-redhead says, "OH MY GOD XION I LOVE YOU!" and that's when you know you've got to leave.

Xion sees you trying to part your way from the crowd and stops singing to bellow "SORA STRIFE! YOU BETTER HAUL YOUR ASS BACK IN THIS CLUB, BOY!" because other than singing and playing bass, Xion lives to be just as obnoxious as she was the first day you met her in sixth grade.

The scene kids turn as a mass and eye you disdainfully. You're wearing the old Doc Martens that Xion made you buy, sure, but they're covered in wite-out daisies. Your shirt has a super-imposed logo on it and you smell like Calvin Klein sample packets; the kiddies are going to devour you whole and spit your bones out to make bracelets out of.

"Fuckin' prep," says one of the kids from the scene-pack, sufficiently using up all of his vocabulary for the night.

The Girl is looking at you all wide-eyed - you can see from here that she's pure Asian, but the baby-blue contacts throw you off. She shakes her bangles excitedly and joins in with Xion's cult chant: "SO-RA STRIFE! SO-RA STRIFE!"

It's a lot like being famous, but you've never really wanted to be the next big thing so you try to walk out. A few of the kiddies try to snatch at your shirt as you walk out and Axel unlatches himself from the usher's lips long enough to go, "Uhhh…" and Riku continues to be perennially useless, what with his shell-shocked face and his arms still wrapped so closely around his Scene Queen that you can't tell where he stops and the blonde begins.

You walk out, right out to the curb and sit down. The house is still raining out beats, Demyx moving turntables to suit Xion's singing and Xaldin's out-of-place-yet-not pig squeals a la Suffokate.

The Girl follows you out, like it's a movie and she's lost her script.

"Hey, you know Xion?" she says. Definitely Japanese, with those cheekbones. Small-boned, too, and delicate.

"Yeah."

"That's pretty boss." the girl marvels. She swings her feet forward; she's wearing boxy Mary Janes that she probably bought from the local hipster store, all yellows and pinks and little skull clasps.

"Um," you say, wanting her to leave or something, "nice shoes."

You are a liar, and she knows it. She raises and eyebrow and says coolly, "Thanks" before launching into this one-sided twenty questions game about Xion and her boys, asking if you'd gone to the first-ever Extra Credit show and what it had been like.

"Boring." you say honestly. Freshman year, Xion back when she had long hair and thought she could play synth and Xaldin had delusions of making Extra Credit into a ska band reminiscent of No Doubt and Big D & The Kids Table. Thank god they gave up on that and found Demyx. "They're a lot better now."

"No way, dude!" says the Girl. She laughs with her mouth wide open. This makes you want to like her, but then she asks about the logo that Extra Credit has for their band tees, and you remember that you don't.

From inside the music house, Xion's voice is soaring over the growling static that is Xaldin, mixing into Demyx's techno beats: _"Do what you know best and storm the stage, get enraged! Get enraged!"_

"Well, there's something to be said for their lyrics."

Xion's songs are ones that will eventually get banned on the radio, all about beats and sex and sugar. They used to apply to you, back in high school when you spent too much time smoking in the back lots with Riku and Axel and gave the finger to anyone who blinked at you. Not so much now, in all your undergraduate glory.

"Whatever." snorts the Girl. "Why are you even here? No offense or anything, but you look mad uncomfortable, you know? Like, maybe you should just go."

You shake your head at her and haul yourself up, heading back into the club. The Girl is still trailing behind you, her sneakers flapping thickly against the pavement.

You take her to heart of the pit, where the scenesters have started this pathetic attempt at wind-milling and moshing, their shoulders sliding off one another like metling butter. Xion is eyeing them and shaking her head at Demyx, who seems mildly disgusted by this pathetic showing of movement.

You say, "Look."

And you push the boy in front of you, hard, who pushes back. The two of you collide and push against others, the din increasing with Xion's smile as she launches into some screaming sessions about policemen and pretty boys digging their own grave.

There's a full-out riot in the music house, and it's all on you. The Girl is pop-eyed as you drag her into it, her thin arms drawn up protectively as she's shoved around. You laugh a little meanly and tell her to stop being such a baby.

"CAUSE SOME DISMEMBERMENT UP IN HERE!" Xaldin howls, and Demyx throws himself into these bizarre little arpeggios as Xion thrashs on stage. "START A RIOT, OR GO HOME!"

The Girl sandwiches herself to you and whispers breathily, "Hey. My name's K -" and you ignore her, your arms already jabbing at the air and your feet leaving the ground long enough to make you feel like you're flying.


End file.
